speakers that have time aligned drivers like Josep

Vandersteen, Green Mountain, Theil to name a few.

Michael:

Just buy a speaker, because if you're looking for the "ah, yes, that's it!" consensus, you're not going to find it here. There is no perfect speaker, amp or system. Have confidence. All the brands you've brought up are worth purchasing, new or used, so saddle up that credit card and ride.

I don't think Joseph Audio uses time-alignment of their drivers (there is more to it than just getting the voice coils equidistant from the listener, and I'm not sure any Joseph Audio models even do that). Nor do they use a linear phase crossover - my understanding is that only a first order passsive crossover has a linear phase characteristic (though a digital signal processing crossover could be phase-correcting and also have a steep slope).

There are trade-offs involved in using a first order crossover, just as there are trade-offs involved in using steep slope crossovers. In my opinion, other things matter more than crossover slope - and usually it's easier to get those other things right with a steep-slope rather than a shallow-slope crossover.

Duke
dealer/manufacturer